Batman Submits to Sharia, Gotham Freaks Out

One day after conservative icon Grover Norquist was outed as a Jihadi stooge (the beard was a tipoff), AFP reports that the anti-sharia blogosphere is up in arms over the latest, greatest threat to Western Civilization: Bruce Wayne. Wait, what?

In the December issues of DC Comics Detective Comics Annual and Batman Annual, the caped crusader has set up Batman Incorporated and wants to install a superhero in cities around the world to fight crime.*

The hero he picks in France is called Nightrunner, the alter ego of a 22-year-old from Clichy-sous-Bois, a tough Paris suburb where urban unrest sparked riots in immigrant districts across France in 2005.

Nightrunner, known to his family and tax collector as "Bilal Asselah," is an expert in parkour, which is awesome. He's also a Muslim who hails from Algeria, which seems to be what conservatives are really upset about. Big Hollywood's Warner Todd Huston, for instance, called the comic, "PCism at its worst." He added: "France is a proud nation. Yet DC Comics has made a foreigner the 'French savior.' This will not sit well with many Frenchmen, for sure."

US comic book creator Bosch Fawstin, who wrote on his blog that "DC Comics has submitted to Islam," is coming up with his own antidote.

"If you're as sick and tired of this IslamiCrap as I am, be on the lookout for my upcoming graphic novel, The Infidel, which features Pigman, an ex-Muslim superhero who is the jihadist's worst nightmare," he blogged.

Pigmen aside, I'd just add that Nightrunner's debut is actually the second Muslim superhero controversy in the last year: Last fall, the New York Post slammed President Obama for praising a cartoon featuring 99 Muslim superheroes who each embody a virtue of Allah**. Looks like Captain Planet is finally off the hook.

* Presumably this comes at the expense of the traditional mom-and-pop superheroes, who, now unemployed and compelled to put food on their table by any means possible, turn to crime. It's the perfect cycle.